Publications on the subject of “Home Networking” or the “Connected Home” or “Telephony and Control” talk about the networking of devices in the private field, such as, for example, TVs, personal computers and other devices in everyday life. In this connection, the telephone, fixed network telephone or cordless telephone, serves as the gateway to the circuit-switched network (voice network). Here, access to the packet-switched network (data network)—(e.g., Internet access) is insignificant, and can be effected in various ways.
The connection between the packet-switched and circuit-switched network, as shown in FIG. 1, only exists to the extent that devices, such as a personal computer which is connected to the packet-switched network, (e.g., the Internet), via an Ethernet, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) or cable link, for the purpose of transmitting data in packets and, for example, a cordless base station which is connected to the circuit-switched network via an ISDN/PSTN network termination for the purpose of speech transmission, request that a connection be established (control), or to configure the device with the help of a cordless mobile module (configuration). In doing this, parts of the cordless base station or the telephone functionality are transferred to the personal computer. The control and configuration also can, of course, be effected in the opposite direction.
What is critical, however, is that no voice data is processed in the packet-switched network or data network, as applicable, but instead there is always a logical link between the voice terminal device, the cordless mobile module, and the switching center, the cordless base station. That is, there is no logical link between the circuit-switched voice network and the packet-switched data network (e.g., the Internet) in relation to voice data. The benefits of voice services in the packet-switched data network (such as, for example, Internet telephony, voice messages) are currently not utilized via a cordless mobile module registered with the cordless base station.
Accordingly, the present invention a data sink/data source, data transmission device and data terminal device for a circuit-switched and packet-switched network which eliminates the logical separation between applications which are based on a circuit-switched network, (e.g., PSTN, ISDN), and applications based on a packet-switched network, (e.g., the Internet).